I'm seeing discounted Fuji crystal archive paper "supreme" at Adorama and slightly cheaper normal Fuji Crystal Archive Type II at B&H. Is there a meaningful difference? Can I work up a filtration setting on one and transfer it to the other? ie. buy the cheaper type II to work up the color correction and buy some larger sheets of "supreme" for final prints.
Thanks for the help.
-D
Crystal Archive is the only color paper left in cut sheets. Everything else comes in rolls. Kodak paper is on indefinite hold due to SinoPromise purchase. I would get as fresh as possible and not worry about a few dollars. CA paper is a great paper, it's not high end polyester base paper like other Fujifilm papers but it makes great prints.Originally Posted by dpaqu
I was just thumbing through a number of my relatively recent CAii prints. It's a decent product; but I'm still waiting for my big roll of Fujiflex, which incidentally, is the ONLY Fuji print product on polyester. All the other print materials are RC paper of one kind or another. RA4 transparency material would obviously be on plastic too; but that's a backlit niche product. Getting anything at the moment other than CAii might be difficult due to pandemic backlog mfg and distribution issues.
Yes; the Supreme is a significantly better paper in several respects IMO. It offers better dmax and comes on a somewhat sturdier base.
I did not compare it side by side with DPII in terms of filtration, but I'd advise in any case to do test strips and full prints with the same paper, always. Hope this helps.
There are different kinds of labeling. In the EU the top end RC CA product is called Maxima. Some laser-printing labs offer that in the US too. All Crystal Archive products are very similar in starting filtration. But I'll have to check out what that "Supreme" paper actually is. I just did - it's a recently improved back imprint paper without the expanded hue gamut of the more expensive Maxima product, which I'd really prefer to get ahold of if my Fujiflex roll doesn't get here soon. Sadly, that Supreme product looks like it's only available in relatively narrow photofinisher stye rolls, which won't do me any good. I really need something 30 inch wide at the moment.
Good to know. Thanks
Hi Drew, where does one order the Fujiflex material?? I'm not sure if I could handle a huge roll(s)
This is a niche where someone like Fotoimpex/Adox could cut sheets. Probably not a market, just stinks that only CA is available in sheets. Nothing wrong with CA paper, just so thin....
Well, ordering from anyone at the moment is getting difficult. I have a backorder from B&H. There are several enormous distribution problems going on at once. Kodak apparently stopped paper production while shifting over to a new subcontractor in China - always a complicated situation. This created massive additional demand on Fuji products. Meanwhile, there's still a huge backlog on things generally, due to lingering pandemic issues. And then, at the more local level everywhere, there's a generational change where even large camera store personnel don't even understand darkroom color printing anymore, and can't communicate well with their product buyers. All this has discouraged even big houses like B&H and Freestyle from stocking any kind of RA4 paper anymore except for Fuji's convenience line of cut sheet of CAii.
I guess, at a certain point, I'll have to try leveraging Fujifilm.USA to sell rolls directly to me through the designated Sales Rep. Although I know how to play that game very well indeed, it's not like back when I was spending millions of dollars apiece on multiple equipment and materials brands before I retired. Small token purchases don't do much to entice returns to your phone calls, even at a thousand bucks a pop. And I'm not quite at that point anyway. Have plenty of other ongoing projects. And there simply might not be any surplus product on hand in Fuji warehousing at this time anyway. That is the first thing I'll try to get a firm answer to; do they even have it? Otherwise, in the long haul, it might be necessary to form some kind of purchasing co-op that attracts their attention. We'll see. But with prices on essential materials like PET substrate based on petrochemicals wildly high at the moment, a company like Fuji might have very good reason to be reluctant to make surplus product until things level off a bit. A substantial war going on at the moment certainly doesn't help things either.
CAii ain't bad as an "ordinary" RA4 paper. I regard it as almost a proofing product prior to printing on expensive Fujiflex itself, especially in large sizes. I know how to make the most out of CAii. But it's just as much effort as printing onto Fujiflex itself; and my oh my, the latter just has that extra "something" - not just the 3d effect of the full gloss, like Cibachrome had, but an expanded hue gamut with both more saturation and more contrast that makes it something really special, which is what I actually need. And there is every reason to think it's more permanent too.
The notion of trying to get someone else to cut Fujiflex into more convenient sizes, now that Fuji itself no longer does it, is not very realistic, because it would not only involve shipping and handling costs both direction, but an additional markup on an already expensive product. And there is a big advantage in having something like a 30 inch roll on hand: I can turn it into any size I want from 30X40 inches down. But cutting a big heavy roll in the dark ain't all that fun either; and for a reasonable markup combined with domestic availability, I'd probably go for that. But obtaining it from the EU would probably be ridiculously expensive. So far, Fujiflex has been made in Japan, not in the Netherlands like CAii. I did buy it 30X40
Fujiflex cut sheets packaged that way by Fuji itself at one time, but doubt we'll ever see that again. Most of this gets used on big laser printers connected to automated XY cutters on one end, and a dedicated wide RA4 processor on the output end. So small users like me might be regarded as both a nuisance customer, and/or as unwanted competition to the volume users who routinely spend serious money not only for their papers, but chemicals, and possibly even machinery too.
I know what it's like to go from big (Whirlpool/Maytag) to small high-end luxury in making appliances. On one hand a supplier will fly you around on a company plane, to well maybe we can talk to you.
The color negative paper and chemistry is in total chaos right now. That's for sure.
Well, I did top-end woodworking machinery, yet at high volume. Big bucks. I knew CEO's all the way from Germany to Japan on a first name basis, who routinely flew in the whole way to visit me, often with a retinue of assistants. But when it comes to the sales reps per se, their loyalty tends to be only as good as the size of your last purchase order, that is, unless you have a very long personal track record with them, which I did with some. But just one roll of RA4 paper lasts me a long time; so not much purchasing clout in that case at all. And unfortunately with Fuji USA, just getting past the entry-level customer service desk to the correct person can be a nightmare. (One reason the best companies don't consider customer service an entry level position, but a serious one.) And with covid still a factor, no telling what the impacts of understaffing have been. I'm not going to pull out my hair over it ... just wait it out, and in the meantime cure my itch by printing black and white.
As the dust begins to settle, we can revisit this question.
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